(Part 2 of 2)

* Technical section:
- A troubleshooting section for technical problems (e.g. you enter a room and it kills you, you enter a room and the items are auto-collected, the block graphics bug, etc.).
- Advice on testing: try all possibilities, have a trained eye for quirky features. Get other people to beta-test games before you release them. Only release something when you're sure the final version can be completed.
- How to avoid the pause bug misery that has afflicted several JSW games because they've put/left the pause bug call in, but have edited Room 63, so it crashes when you pause. I know I've given details in an earlier message on this board.
- Guardian class economy (reusing guardian classes; designing rooms around guardian classes rather than vice versa).
- What 'patches' are available? (Geoff Mode, JSW128, John Elliott's MM patch, the JSW:LOTR patches). Advice on hacking the game engines (John Elliott's MM & JSW disassemblies) and writing patch vectors.
- How to do things that the editors don't support (e.g. editing the title screen in MM, using the MM patch, editing the music, etc.).
- Where to find room formats and technical information (my Manic Miner Room Format is a one-stop shop for MM, but for JSW there's Arsen Torbarina's JSW tech page, the documentation for Geoff Eddy's JCLOP editor, and various bits & bobs in the We Pretty documentation).

I suggest you have a read of things like my Manic Miner Room Format, and the JSW CK documentation, as they contain some information that should go into the FAQ. There's also a lot of useful stuff on this message board, though it's a lot to read through now! :-)

--
Andrew Broad
{http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/ broken link}
{http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/ broken link}
{http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~broada/spectrum/willy/ broken link}